Artist's Statement
It goes without saying that drugs
are bad and that we at The
Pain do not in any way condone
their abuse. Let the record show that the hooch
did William Faulkner’s prose, health, and
complexion no favors, and he ended up cowering
from invisible dive-bombing Jerries; that Miles
Davis mostly sat around watching TV while on heroin
and only returned to making music after successfully
kicking it; and that as Chancellor of Germany Adolf
Hitler made some very poor policy and strategic
decisions, at least some of which might be attributed
to the daily injections of amphetaimes his doctor
had him on after ’42 or so, and that the
bad end to which he ultimately came was a direct
result of his own poor judgment. Among others,
he committed the most famous of the classic blunders:
Never Get Involved in the Land War in Asia. A textbook
meth-head move. In a clichéd denoument straight
out of so many drug education filmstrips, he ended
up shooting his wife and himself in an underground
bunker while the Russian army closed in around
his crumbling empire and his body was doused in
gasoline and set on fire, and now he is the most
hated person in world history. "You see?
You see what happens, Larry? This is what happens
when you fuck a stranger in the ass." -Walter
Sobchak.
Nevertheless, I felt a faint echo
of the at-first-bemused-then-increasingly-alarmed
disbelief, that creeping disconnect from consensual
reality, that I felt back during the darkest days
of the Bush administration when I read the recent
expressions of what I can only assume was 100% pro
forma outrage and remorse over the Michael
Phelps “scandal.” Is this really national
news--“23-YEAR-OLD MAN SMOKES
POT”? (It reminds me of a time
when my friend Boyd mocked my namby-pamby fears
of getting somehow busted for an ill-advised fling: “What
kind of 'scandal' are you imagining--‘MAN
FUCKS WOMAN!’?”) Who,
exactly, is shocked by this revelation—eight-year-olds?
Do eight-year-olds control the culture now? Do
we all have to pretend we have the moral sensibilities
of eight-year-olds for their benefit? And why aren’t
we all publicly reviling and shunning the real
villain in this story, the loathsome little tattle
who sold the photo?
Also, not sound to all Revenge-of-the-Nerds
here, but why do we expect professional athletes
to be role models for young people? Athletic excellence,
like artistic excellence, is an amoral achievement.
Any asshole can do it. (In fact being an asshole
is far from a hindrance to achievement and fame.)
Also, the guy just won eight freaking Olympic
gold medals. And he has to know, on some level,
that this is as good as his life will ever get.
That’s got to be a hard thing to grapple
with at age twenty-three. Does anyone seriously
expect him not to celebrate/console himself by
getting fucked up? It
seems to me that we as a nation are missing the
real moral here, which is that this Olympic record-setting
athlete smokes pot and was not immediately transformed
into a subhuman junkie--or, worse, as the teen
propaganda always warns (knowing that this is the
worst imaginable thing for its target audience)
A Loser. Or, as my colleague Emily Flake, a hard
drinker who never misses a deadline, put it: "Being
on drugs is no excuse for not getting shit done." I
suspect that what gives drugs their irresistible
allure for kids is less their “role models” using
them than the hysterical overreactions of the most
contemptible, hypocritical, censorious bullying
authority-figure adults. I mean, with lame-os and
squares like that trying so desperately to keep
you totally ignorant about something, you know
that thing has got to be fun. Hey, it was true
for sex.
But see,
now I’m getting all apoplectic now over something
really trivial and tabloidish. This is what you
get for paying attention to the news. It's just
that, as someone who doesn’t have kids, doesn’t
much like them, and resents having to live in a
world that often seems to revolve around them,
I have no patience for matters of grown-up law
and policy being decided on the basis of what isn’t
even actual concern for the well-being of children
but rather inhibited adults’ fantasies about
childhood innocence. Comedian Adam Carolla, after
a visit to Europe, began referring to it as "AdultWorld," because
the government trusted you to drink a beer in the
park without going apeshit and running amok looting
and raping.
As a cartoonist, it is my natural
and proper rôle to act as a cheerleader for
unrepentant libertinism and vice. But I am aware
that my cartoon is read by the Impressionable Young,
so let me step out of my official persona for a
moment to say, in all seriousness, that drugs are
to say the least something of a mixed bag, and
the unfair fact is that one that is harmless and
fun for your friend might turn out, because of
some bullshit genetic diathesis, to be a deadly
addictive poison for you. And that in any event
they tend to destroy rather than enhance ambition
and talent over the long haul. There is, appparently,
no such thing as a neurochemical free lunch. If
I were you 'd maybe lay off them at least until
you graduate high school. Give your brain a chance
to actually finish growing first before you begin
the life's work of demolishing it. However, if
you ever do achieve the ne plus ultra in
your chosen field and become the idol of millions
and get set up cushily for life with endorsement
contracts, you have my official sanction to Do
Bong Hits.
Thanks to Emily Flake for letting
me steal this idea from a conversation we had over
hot wings.
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